Salvatore Samperi
Malizia

Laura Antonelli was, in all likelihood, the most beautiful and alluring Italian actress of the past century, with a very sad and equally well-known existential trajectory that has now rendered her a sort of "posthumous in life," forgotten and abandoned to her own solitude, oblivious of herself and what was probably a very sad life behind the limelight.

Already at the peak of her career, the actress of Istrian origins perhaps saw her talent and her - even brilliant - verve overshadowed by her uncommon beauty, being underutilized in films where her magnetic charm was a kind of decoy for the audience (which flocked in large numbers), works in which she was now crushed into the character of the ostensibly modest beauty, but intrinsically sinful and venereal. Unfortunately, she was forced to reprise similar roles until the mid-'80s, before forcibly retiring from the scene in the early '90s due to various problems which are better left unmentioned here.

"Malizia" by the director from Padua, Salvatore Saperi ('74), is the film that definitively launched the Antonelli persona - even before the actress - disturbing the dreams of all generations of cinephiles who've been able to watch this feature film (not just those who were young thirty-four years ago, to be clear) thanks to a clever mix of innocence and disturbance, family and betrayal, domestic atmospheres and sexuality, well symbolized by the famous poster, which itself synthesizes the most well-known scene of the film. We also add unconscious incestuous references (certainly the offspring of sham psychologism, but no less effective for that) and the erotic myth of every teenager: losing one's virginity to a relatively older and more experienced woman.

As I usually do, I'll summarize the plot for anyone who hasn't seen the film: a widower from Catania, father of three children, hires a young and charming housekeeper to take care of the house and family following his wife's passing. The girl triggers the fantasies of the three children, particularly the middle son, who, in a game of mutual seduction, sometimes characterized by a certain sadism, makes the woman his erotic dream, simultaneously substituting her, almost as a transfer, for his mother. Meanwhile, the same girl becomes the father's fiancée, arousing in the son a form of jealousy and competition with his parent (likely mixed with the anger of seeing the deceased mother replaced in the paternal bed), which culminates in a perhaps not unexpected but - upon close examination - not entirely predictable ending...

Overall, it must be said without excessive qualms, it is a rather modest film, saved by the acting of excellent character actors, first among them Turi Ferro, by the convincing (and in my opinion deeply involved) performance of the young Alessandro Momo (who died a few months after filming), as well as by the charm of two other women who represent, in a triangular manner, the complement to Antonelli's character: Angela Luce and Tina Aumont, respectively in the roles of a sensual mature woman and the young and provocative friend of the widower's children, symbolizing a sort of evolution of the erotic characteristics of Italian women across the '50s, '60s, and '70s. The plot seems, on the whole, banal (perhaps because it epitomizes many people's dreams), the psychology of the characters is sketched out (though the superficiality of it all can spark speculation among lovers of the "unsaid" or "unshown"), the Sicilian setting is full of the most hackneyed clichés, heir to the atmospheres in the works of Brancati and Germi's "Divorce Italian Style."

The perhaps most interesting aspect of the movie can probably be found in the mystery surrounding the women, and in their depiction: in "Malizia", upon closer inspection, the woman is not a mere object - as the Italian morality of the early twentieth century partly suggested - but becomes the engine of men's passions, plays with them and their desires, perhaps proving superior to their desires, which she orients and probably guides. The reason this happens is not explained or clarified, getting lost in the mysterious face of the protagonist, about whom, in the end, not much is known or understood.

As little was understood about Laura Antonelli, the person behind that character, until she returned, anonymously, as Laura Antonaz, a young Istrian refugee who, from a gymnastics teacher, became a symbol of a certain femininity, and then nothing.